History

 James B. Duke makes an additional bequest to establish the Duke School of Medicine, Duke School of Nursing, and Duke Hospital, with the goal of improving health care in the Carolinas and nationwide.

Eighteen third year and thirty first year medical students began classes on October 2nd.

Duke surgeon J. Deryl Hart, MD, introduces ultraviolet lamps into operating rooms to kill airborne germs that cause post-operative staph infections, dramatically reducing the number of infections and related deaths.

Joseph Beard, MD, and his wife and research partner Dorothy developed a killed-virus vaccine for horse encephalitis, AKA "blind staggers," using ultracentrifuges and chick embroyos. The vaccine saved hundreds of thousands of horses and protected humans, which also helping establish the notion that killed virus is effective and safe as a vaccine.

Psychiatrist Ewald W. Busse establishes the Duke University Center for Aging, the first research center of its kind in the nation. Now the oldest continuously running aging center in the United States, the Duke Center for Aging has pioneered long-term studies of health problems among the elderly.

William G. Anlyan appointed Dean of the School of Medicine.

1964-1989

Irwin Fridovich, PhD, and graduate student Joe McCord discover the enzyme superoxide dismutase, which protects all living things against the toxicity of oxygen.

The Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center becomes one of the nation’s first cancer centers to be established with the passage of the National Cancer Act. It is designated a "comprehensive" cancer center by the National Cancer Institute in 1973.

Duke biophysicist Jane Richardson’s ribbon diagram, a method of representing the 3D structure of proteins, is first published.

Science's 'Mother of Ribbon Diagram' Celebrates 50 years at Duke

Duke becomes one of two hospitals to conduct the first human clinical trials of AZT, the first drug to substantially improve quality of life for AIDS patients.

Ralph Snyderman, MD,  served as dean of Duke University School of Medicine and the first chancellor for health affairs. He oversaw the development of the Duke University Health System, and served as its first president and chief executive officer. 

1989 - 2001

Duke geneticists invent a three-minute test to screen newborns for over 30 metabolic diseases at once. Though devastating if undetected, the diseases can be controlled once identified. The test is now used throughout the country. 

Thomas F. Tedder, PhD, named inaugural chair. In 2023, the department was renamed the Department of Integrative Immunobiology under the leadership of Raphael Valdivia, PhD. 

Duke scientists help to discover BRCA1, the gene responsible for many inherited forms of breast and ovarian cancers.

Duke researchers are the first to use magnetic resonance spectroscopy to track levels of n-acetylaspartate (N-AA) as a marker for Alzheimer’s disease, proving that such a marker exists and that it can be detected.

Elizabeth DeLong, PhD, named inaugural chair. 

Researchers at Duke and Vanderbilt universities discover the first major gene known to determine an individual’s risk for developing age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of visual impairment and legal blindness in the  elderly.

Duke University and the FDA co-founded the Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative (CTTI), a public-private partnership designed to create new solutions for better, more efficient clinical trials; DCRI serves as the host of CTTI. 

The Department of Dermatology is established. Russel Hall, MD named chair.

A team of scientists from Duke and Johns Hopkins universities identify mutations in a gene that make cells immortal and appear to play a pivotal role in three of the most common types of brain tumors, as well as cancers of the liver, tongue and urinary tract.

Robert J. Lefkowitz MD, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, shared the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Brian K. Kobilka of Stanford University School of Medicine, who was a post-doctoral fellow in Lefkowitz's lab in the 1980s. They were recognized for their work on a class of cell surface receptors that have become the target of prescription drugs, including antihistamines, ulcer drugs and beta blockers to relieve hypertension, angina and coronary disease.

Robert J. Lefkowitz's Nobel Page

Jeffery Lawson, MD, PhD, and Laura Niklason, MD, PhD, develop a bioengineered blood vessel, which Lawson grafts into an artery in a patient’s arm, the first in-human procedure of its kind in the U.S.

The patient was among the first U.S. recipients of the Argus 2 surgically implanted "bionic eye." 

Paul Modrich, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator was one of 3 recipients of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for mechanistic studies of DNA repair. According to the Nobel Foundation, their work has provided fundamental knowledge of how a living cell functions and is, for instance, used for the development of new cancer treatments.

Paul Modrich's Nobel Page

The project is part of a $157 million federal initiative aimed at studying how environmental factors affect childhood health (ECHO).

The Center for Population Health Sciences was elevated to department status, effective July 1, 2017. Lesley Curtis, PhD, director of the center, assumed the role of interim chair.

In a study using mice bred to have peanut allergies, Duke researchers were able to reprogram the animals' immune systems using a nanoparticle delivery of molecules to the lymph nodes that switched off the life-threatening reactions to peanut exposures.

A donor’s altruism leads to the nation’s second HIV-positive live kidney transplant.

DCRI received a $50 million PCORI grant for the Healthcare Worker Exposure Response and Outcomes (HERO) research program and received a $80 million NIH grant for RADx-UP, both research programs that will study the prevention and testing of COVID-19, respectively DCRI is Duke University’s top awardee for federal COVID-19 research funding.

Mary Klotman, MD, was reappointed for a second five-year term as dean of the Duke University School of Medicine, vice chancellor for health affairs at Duke University, and chief academic officer for Duke University Health System. 

A team at Duke Health has performed what is believed to be the world’s first partial heart transplant, with the living arteries and valves from a freshly donated heart fused onto a patient’s existing heart.

Klotman’s appointment, effective July 1, 2023, follows a restructuring of the leadership model for Duke Health’s academic and clinical missions.